This review provides the overview of the fundamental concepts on ketone properties, and summarizes the recent advances of visible light-induced asymmetric reactions of carbonyl compounds for synthesizing chiral alcohols, which are introduced by the type of catalytic system, including single catalyst and synergetic catalysts. It is hopeful to provide guidance and assistance for the development of this field in future.

Abstract

Visible light-induced photocatalysis has been widely investigated, which offers exciting opportunities to build new catalytic platforms that are unattainable under ground state conditions. Asymmetric photocatalysis has been a longstanding challenge due to the high reactivity of photogenerated intermediates leading to strong background reaction. Carbonyl group is an important fundamental scaffold in organic synthesis. The photocatalytic asymmetric transformations of carbonyl compounds for synthesizing enantioenriched secondary and tertiary alcohols are of significant value but remain problematic. Even so, a series of intriguing works concerning this topic have been reported in recent year. This review summarizes the advances in this area, mainly dividing into single and synergetic catalyst systems, and the mechanism of each reaction is discussed.